2022 I am a resident alien(H1B) and my wife is on H4. She will be on F1 later at end of next year which is around November 2023. I am paying for her tuition fee and I have the following question.
@nikeshv , As I understand the situation here :
(a) you are H1-B and having met the Substantial Presence Test are considered Resident for Tax Purposes. Taxed by the US on your world income.
(b) your wife is on dependent visa H-4 and thus also considered a Resident for Tax purposes.
At this stage , you have only two valid filing status --- 1. Married Filing Joint ( MFJ) or 2. Married Filing Separate ( MFS). Head of Household status (HoH) requires the presence and support of a qualified child / person AND unmarried or considered unmarried ( living away from spouse for at least the second of half of a tax year ). MFJ is generally the most tax benign fling status for most filers.
If your spouse goes to school, and she changes to F-1 ( independent & student visa ), depending on facts and circumstances at the time she may or may not get exemption from counting presence because she has already been a resident for tax purposes. Her ITIN may be replaced by SSN but F-1 status is not a work visa ( although one does get special permission to work on campus or during OPT/CPT but still must be "full time student" ). Thus I don't see any changes to your filing status. Don't know if I understand what you are trying to achieve. Can you please tell more
Namaste ji
pk
@nikeshv , As I understand the situation here :
(a) you are H1-B and having met the Substantial Presence Test are considered Resident for Tax Purposes. Taxed by the US on your world income.
(b) your wife is on dependent visa H-4 and thus also considered a Resident for Tax purposes.
At this stage , you have only two valid filing status --- 1. Married Filing Joint ( MFJ) or 2. Married Filing Separate ( MFS). Head of Household status (HoH) requires the presence and support of a qualified child / person AND unmarried or considered unmarried ( living away from spouse for at least the second of half of a tax year ). MFJ is generally the most tax benign fling status for most filers.
If your spouse goes to school, and she changes to F-1 ( independent & student visa ), depending on facts and circumstances at the time she may or may not get exemption from counting presence because she has already been a resident for tax purposes. Her ITIN may be replaced by SSN but F-1 status is not a work visa ( although one does get special permission to work on campus or during OPT/CPT but still must be "full time student" ). Thus I don't see any changes to your filing status. Don't know if I understand what you are trying to achieve. Can you please tell more
Namaste ji
pk
Hi @pk
Bang on!! you did get most of it right. I understood that I should be going with MFJ for the next year tax filling. Currently my wife is enrolled to a college and her visa status is H4 because of COVID and for other reasons the processing time to change from H4 to F1 is around 9 months so by that time we would be in next year applying for returns. When I apply for returns next year do I need get an ITIN number for my wife
2) After the status changes if my lands a job on campus or through OPT/CPT then do I have to can the ITIN and request a SSN?
@nikeshv , even if your wife is on H-4 ( a non-work visa) she is still eligible for ITIN ( from the IRS) -- this will allow you to file as MFJ.
Once she is in school , she may be eligible for SSN and in which case here ITIN will die and you use that to file MFJ.
Note that even during the first year ( say you pass the Substantial Presence Test in beg of 2022 ) if your wife is present in the USA ( even with H-4), you can file your return along with her as MFJ, fill out and attach the request for ITIN ( W-7 ) and all the relevant docs, and file by mail, IRS will indeed grant her an ITIN retrospectively for the year 2022. The IRS being somewhat understaffed, will take a while to process the paper-return and the W-7 but you will get the number ( which is good only for return filing).
Does that answer your query ?
Namaste ji
pk
@pk Thanks for explaining it in detail, yes it does answer my query.